ACT AND POTENCY (Greek ενεργεια [energeia]—δυναμις [dynamis], παθη [pathe]; Latin

actus—potentia)—mutually ordered factors or components (ordered in different orders) of

one being, in which act and potency are respectively: form and matter, substance and
accidents, existence and essence, and thus that which determines and that which is
determined, that which subordinates and that which is subordinated, that which is real and
that which is possible in a concrete being.

THE HISTORY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE THEORY OF ACT AND POTENCY. Aristotle
formulated the theory of act and potency in his discussion with Plato and Plato’s
predecessors. They saw in the world’s reality many dynamic and potential aspects, as well as
static and determining aspects, but they did not formulate a synthesis of their correct
intuitions. Aristotle’s conception of act and potency is one of the greatest achievements of
human thought. He synthesized the philosophical explanation of reality in its various
changes and states of being and in the general "decontradictifying" knowledge of reality. His
explanation consisted in showing a factor whose negation would be a negation of the fact of
the being that is to be explained. The conception of act and potency is the culminating and
general theory of all compositions in being, both in existence and in action, which is the
manifestation of dynamism in being. There are many compositions in a concrete being. The
compositions that are distinguished in a philosophical analysis—of substance and accidents,
matter and form, essence and existence—are not the only types of composition, but they are
the “perfective compositions” that are associated with different types of qualities in beings,
especially in human conduct that is developed by habits. Besides the category of quality,
there are many other categories composed in different ways, whose composition is
noncontradictory only when they form one category of being and are related to one another
as potency to act. This allows us to have a more profound understanding of a being that is
contingent and variable, and yet the same being.

Aristotle discovered potency and act while examining his predecessors’ one-sided
explanations of reality. They pondered the character of reality and asked about its beginning
or arche (αρχη). Their first answers focused on the material element from which everything
arose and persists in its existence. The Greek mythologists first indicated material elements,
such as “chaos”, “night”, “Oceanos”, and “Styx”. These were indefinite and undetermined
factors. They were in a sense non-beings, if being was understood as a determination or a
stable and necessary content. The idea that the beginning (arche) was some radically
indeterminate element and something that was almost a non-being could not, thought
Aristotle, result in knowledge, since the being and reality in which we live could not have
arisen from non- being.

The thought of the mythologists was reinforced by the later speculations of Heraclitus and
Anaxagoras. Heraclitus thought that the world is in contact flux, for everything is changing
and nothing endures: παντα ρει και ουδεν μενει [panta rhei kai ouden menei]. Only change
and motion exists, which was expressed by the metaphorical saying: “one cannot step into
the same river twice”. The “war” of all forces among themselves is the father of all that
exists. There is in the world no stable element, no subject that would endure as the same.
Anaxagoras conceived of reality also as a radical mixture of everything with everything. The
krasis (κρασις) of Anaxagoras was this primal “chaos” from which all reality would emerge.
They conceived reality as a great and radical change manifested in restless and all-
comsuming fire. Is there only change in reality?

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 Without doubt, Anaxagoras and Heraclitus postulated the existence a reason such as Nous
(νους) or Logos (λογος), but Aristotle emphasized the potential aspect of reality and ignored
the matter of the Logos and the Nous of Anaxagoras. Most likely, Aristotle wanted to
emphasized that the philosophers he cited had a one-sided approach: for them reality would
have been radically potential. Aristotle could not be satisfied with such a vision of reality,
since it was not in agreement with reason, its function of knowing, and its rational order,
which is basically rooted in reality. Aristotle as a Platonist placed too much value on the
rationality of knowledge to agree with a vision of reality that was only potential. For this
reason he opposed it with a contrary vision of absolute rationality, also emphatic. This vision
was associated with a static image of the world as Parmenides and the Eleatic school had
proposed. For Parmenides, a being identical with itself, unchanging, single and not subject to
any motion or becoming, was the only reality. Such a being as an object of thought appeared
as identity formulated in absolute terms in the form of the principle: “being is being”.
Therefore no changes could occur. There were no transitions from non-being to being, or
from being to non-being, since there was no non-being. The principle of identity is
accessible only to the intellect and is the chief law of the intellect. This law is the basis of
radical rationality and the way of the “sages”, as opposed to the way of “fools” in which
there appears plurality, change and individuality in beings. The Eleatics, with Zeno at their
head, likely did not want to acknowledge change and motion. They were convinced that
motion is impossible because it implies contradictions.

Aristotle understood these two opposed views that tried to explain reality. Radical mobilism
did not acknowledge any enduring structures that could be an object of necessary cognition.
The static point of view professed only immobilism, which rejected motion and change
while holding to the principle of identity. Both the mobilism of Heraclitus and the
immobilism of Parmenides and the Eleatics arrived at monistic positions, or positions
approaching monism, in their interpretation of the world. It would be difficult, however, to
reject completely the achievements and interpretations of both these schools, since both had
discovered something real in the world and presented explanations that were realistic in
some respects, even if one-sided.

Aristotle made a synthesis of these two positions and accepted what truth he found in both
interpretations. He said that reality is neither exclusively potential, nor exclusively static, but
in different aspects it is dynamic and static. It provides the foundations of necessity for our
knowledge and for performing an abstraction from motion or change and individuality,
which are associated with the mobilism of a thing. Although reality is dynamic, potential,
and changing, at the same time it has in itself certain necessary, identical and static
structures. Reality is “composed” of a factor or factors that are “potential” and which
influence the change and dynamism of being, and at the same time reality possesses in itself
factors which “actualize”, determine and make necessary existence, and so also actualize,
determine and make necessary the knowledge of the being. This was the discovery of the
“composition” of being of potential and actual factors. Act—energeia (ενεργεια) and
entelecheia (εντελεχεια) —is the basic side of a thing that at the same time is changing and
possesses dynamis (δυναμις)—the potency for change in an active and passive sense. This
vision provided a way out of the paradoxes of mobilistic mobilism and static mobilism, and
at the same time led to a more profound explanation of the phenomenon of motion and
provided a basis for a knowledge of things in necessary terms.

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 REASONS FOR ACCEPTING ACT AND POTENCY IN REAL BEINGS. Aristotle
provided rational justifications for act and potency in really existing beings He showed: (1)
that the observation and analysis of motion or change is noncontradictory only when being is
constituted of act and potency; (2) that the principle of non-contradiction can be truly
binding in the real world only if the world has a structure of act and potency; (3) we can call
upon the common sense experience of those who for various theretical reasons rejected the
composition of being of act and potency, as did the authors of the Megarian school.

Ad 1. Motion and change are most evident in the world; hence the phenomenon of motion
evokes acts of cognition among animals and men. Motion and change do not exist apart from
beings, but are a state of being in its various categories of substance and accidents. In the
fact of motion we primarily consider its act, namely the agent that determine action (motion)
— i.e., spatial changes in locomotion, or qualitative changes such as becoming warm or
becoming white. However, this act is not completed; it is not in the state where motion
ceases. Such an act therefore is in the state of the further perfecting of the being. An act that
is still being completed perfects, determines, and organizes organized elements (e.g., the
building of a house, upbringing of children, learning)—when such an act is in an imperfect
state, it is an act in potency to completion. It is in potency to the full determination and
organization of the elements in which motion occurs. The fact of motion and transformation
in a being reveals its state as an act moving toward completion, and its state of a potency that
is being completed by motion. Hence Aristotle described motion as “an act that is in potency
as such” (Met., 1065 b 16). The same real being is therefore the object that is is a real
potency to actualization in a motion or transformation. Act and potency are real states of the
same being that is subject to motion and transformations. A real potency in being may be
further or closer to the various acts that a being gains by transformation or motion. Only act
and potency can provide an explanation for the phenomenon of motion and reveal its
essentially integrating factors.

Descartes attempted to define motion by linking matter’s powerlessness and forces “from the
exterior”, and Hegel tried to define motion in terms of the internal “contradiction” of being
that is evoked in “becoming” as the “liberation” of being. Both these solutions are
unacceptable in philosophy, since they start from wrong a priori premises, yet even wrong
conceptions in some cases seem to fit reality, although they do not explain reality.

Ad 2. Aristotle notes that if our cognition is realistic, namely if the contents of our cognition
depend upon being, then both the mobilistic monism of Heraclitus and the radical
immobilism of Parmenides are contrary to the observed state of things (namely with the fact
that we affirm the determinants of being despite the position of mobilism, and we affirm
potentiality and motion), and they are contrary to to the principle of non-contradiction. If
Parmideanism were true, that “only one being exists”, then necessarily man and non-man
would be the same. This is an absurdity. If only mobilism were true, then by the same token
we would have to reject the principle of non-contradiction, since then everything would be
everything and there would be no distinctions in things. If we hold to the principle of non-
contradiction and reject both of these radically monistic theories, we should acknowledge
that there is both determination (act) and motion or tranformation (potency) in things.

Ad 3. The Megarian school was established on the Isthmus of Corinth by disciples of radical
Platonism after Plato’s death. They held that only ideas exist and rejected changing and
potentiality in things. Aristotle carried on polemics with them. He appealed to the “common
sense” that was common to all people. The Megarians (Diodorus of Cronus, Eucleides of

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 Megara) held that knowledge was characterized by necessity, and the objects of knowledge
also were characterized by necessity and invariability. Aristotle appealed to “common sense”
and noted that the expression “house- builder” (οικοδομος [oikodomos]) implied the
possibility of building a house, not merely the act in which a house comes into being. To
deny that this is possible is to deny all art and craftsmanship. Craftsmen are people who have
a real potency for the actualization of their domain of art. The same happens with real
potencies in nature. If no real potency existed, we would have to deny the harvest of grain
after the time of sowing and growth, the gathering of grain when it becomes ripe, the
possibility of waking a sleeper, the upbringing of a child, or the training of a citizen to work
in society. All these potencies are real and anchored in being. They are part of the structure
of being. In a being, apart from the act that determines the being to a particular identity of
content and not some other, there is still a real potency for actualization according to the
rules of nature or the rules of art. To deny this is to eliminate the action of nature or art, and
thereby that of culture as a whole. In real life, we cannot rely on the radical and a priori
speculations of philosophers that do not take into account real life.

WHAT ARE POTENCY AND ACT? For Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, the theoreticians of
potency and act, being is the object of our knowledge. We know real aspects in an existing
being: the potential aspect and the actual aspect. In the First Being, what we conceive is his
act. Aristotle called act “energeia” (εν- εργον [en-ergon]—work) and “entelécheia ([εν-
τελος- εχειν [en-telos-echein]—to achieve the end]; act is most evident upon the background
of motion that aims at something as its completion—and its aim is act as something fulfilled,
performed, perfect, as an end or term. Aristotle held that act “is that which makes a thing be,
but not in the same way as it is when it is potency” (Met., 1048 a 30). Therefore we conceive
act upon the background of motion as the realization of motion, as the actualization of the
potentiality of a being. In real states of ordering or relation, the intellect reads the evident
content of act and potency. Act understood as motion appears primarily as action, namely as
the fulfillment of an active potency, or act is present to the intellect as it reads being as the
ultimate perfection and determination of being, as “entelécheia”, namely as the final
fulfillment of being and, as a result of transformatios, the achievement of a determination
and “form of being” which is an actualization of a passive potency.

We read out potency in being by its ordering to act, and so we speak of “passive potency”
which is the “source of change in some other thing, or in the same thing qua other” (ibid.,
1045 a 11), and “active potency” which is the reason for a change in another being (or itself)
as other. The manifestations of potency can be found in all the faculties of action, such as the
senses, the reason, the will etc.. The basic manifestation of potency is passive potency, since
it is ultimately opposed to act. Active potency also subordinate to an act, for it operates in
the measure in which it is somehow “set in motion” or “actualized”. Thus the opposition of
potency and act basically concerns act and passive potency, which is an ordering (according
to the dispositions of nature or dispositions introduced by art) to act. Potency is known by
way of act; it is ordered to act, but there is a privation or stéresis (στερησις) of that act within
it.

Now that we distinguished between potency and act, we should examine how they are
concretely manifested in really existing being. We may distinguish: (a) objective potency, or
pure potency, which is a non-contradictory system of concepts. Sometimes this is called
intentional potency. It is not the real potency of which metaphysics speaks; it is not realized
in any concrete being as a subject; (b) subjective potency, namely real active potency, which
as the reason for the transformation of another being is “reducible” to passive potency and

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 “mixed” with act in various categories of being, and so in substance and accident; (c) pure
passive potency, which is “prime matter” as the ultimate term in the real explanation of
substantial changes.

Potency thus understood is always an ordering to act, and it helps us to understand the
character of act in being—“pure” immanent action, e.g., cognition. Act as perfection
concerns: (a) active potency—active potencies are acts of real action that lead to a product;
(b) passive potency—these are forms of accidents depending upon the potentiality that the
form perfects (quantity, quality, relation, etc.), the forms of perishable substances, of
substances with cognition, and indestructible substances (such as angels and demons); the
pure form, which is the Aristotelian god who is the ultimate act. An act is an end in real
intention, and a “work” in its execution.

The above outline sets in order our understanding of act and potency. It primarily concerns
Aristotle’s system, since in the conception of being as it was further developed by Thomas
Aquinas, the conception of being takes on a fuller character, where God is Pure Act as Pure
Existence. For Aristotle, the highest manifestation of being is form, since for Aristotle, the
“existence” of being was imperceptible and outside the philosophical “system” of cognition,
for it concerned the “whole” of reality and could not be explained.

WHAT IS THE RELATION OF POTENCY TO ACT? In a real being the aspect of being
called act possesses: (a) primacy in cognition, since only actual reality causes the process of
cognition; (b) primacy in being, for only an actual existing being can be a reason for change
or motion, namely for all that is expressed in the potency of being. Potency is the reason for
everything in being that is associated with a state of imperfection, incompleteness, and
multiplication; whenever the problem of explaining contingent and potential-dynamic reality
arises, we cannot forget in our explanation potency in being as the factor that “causes”
imperfection and limits the states of act.

Keeping in mind the basic “functions” of act and potency in being, we should be aware that
potency and act are essentially ordered to each other in one being, and that they are always
found in the same category of being, and therefore we know the nature of a potency in being
by the act that is elicited from the potency. From our knowledge of act in being, we may
infer something about the nature of the potency that is joined with the act by necessity. This
has a special application in the study of man’s nature. Man’s biological and psychic acts can
reveal his nature. Act and potency are two states of the same being, and as they are
essentially ordered to each other, they create only one (essentially one) real being. The unity
of a being is interchangeable with the being itself because in one being there can be only one
act of being that has the possibility of actualizing many potencies of being. The unity of
being is determined only by the act of being. Of course that which is an act of being in a
“lower” order may at the same time be related as a potency to an act of being in a “higher”
order. This primarily concerns the relation of potency and act under the aspect of the content
or essence of being, where form is act in relation to matter, and form is always a potency in
relation to the being’s act of existence (which constitutes being), for only “under” the act of
existence can the content of the essence be organized. Without the being’s act of existence,
none of the contents would be real or have any value in being; it is obvious that from two
acts of being and two potencies without act there is not one being, since one potency added
to another does not create a being or, by the same token, the unity of a being. The existence
of the Being who is only pure act is possible and necessary. This is the Absolute—God. On
the other hand, it would be a contradiction if a pure potency existed in itself without an act.

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 Therefore prime matter conceived as pure potency cannot exist independently anywhere, but
always exists in connection with some act.

The connection of potency and act in action is an important matter. An analysis of the action
of contingent beings shows that an act is always the reason for the realization of an action in
which we may observe the linking of potency and act. Aristotle observed that everything that
is subject to motion (change, action), and so “everything that is generated, is generated from
something, and by something” (Met., 1049 b 24); the expression “by something" should be
specially emphasized in the Aristotelian adage “omne quod movetur ab alio movetur”
(“Whatever is moved is moved by something else”), which was refined by Saint Thomas:
“nihil reducitur de potentia in actum nisi per ens in actu” (S. th., I-II, q. 2, a. 2) (“nothing
can be reduced from potency to act except by a being in act”). As we consider the motion
and change in general terms, we may emphasize the necessity of act as the reason of being
for “motion”: “moveri enim nihil aliud est, quam reducere de potentia in actum” (ibid., I, q.
2, a. 3) (“to be moved is nothing other than to be reduced from potency to act”).

The problem of action is nothing other than the problem of the actualization of potency. We
know that the relation of potency to act is a relation, and we may provide a rational
justification for this relation with the help of the principle of non-contradiction when we
oppose act to potency as non-act. Our reasoning will proceed in the same way as when we
think about non-contradiction: “being is not non-being”, “act is not non-act.”. We can
expression a being’s potency as opposed to act in the form of the principle of non-
contradiction, and then the necessity of act in motion and action will become very apparent.
Act is the “reason of being” for action and the continuation of action. On the basis of the
necessity of act as the reason of being in action or motion, there appears the necessity of the
ultimate Pure Act—the Absolute as the sufficient ultimate reason for action. From the
understanding of the motion of action that realizes potency by act, it follows that a being acts
insofar as it is in act, and that it undergoes and receives action in itself insofar as it is in
potency: “omne agit secundum quod est in act, patitur autem secundum quod est in
potentia.” All real potencies of being are ordered to their actualization: “frustra est potentia,
quae non traditur in actum” (“a potentcy would be futilte that did not pass into act”).

In the history of the reception of the Aristotelian theory of act and potency, which was richly
developed by Thomas Aquinas, there were modifications of this theory in various systems
that were applied to the conception being and knowledge. Plotinus in his Enneades [II, 4,
and IV, 3) modified the theory of act and potency in the context of his conception of matter
(υλη) and the relation of the soul to its faculties for action. J.Duns Scotus and F. Suarez
made far-reaching modifications to the Aristotelian theory. They both had a great influence
on how philosophy was conceived in scholasticism and neoscholasticism. Each introduced
new distinctions in his philosophical system, e.g., Duns Scotus introduced the “formal
difference”, and Suarez introduced the “physical” and “metaphysical” difference, which was
a consequence of the epistemologization of metaphysics and influenced a different
understanding of being.

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Mieczysław A. Krąpiec

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